MAX MARA / COLECTION SPRING – SUMMER 2016 / MILAN FASHION WEEK

The Max Mara Spring /Summer 2016 collection is anew featuring luxe textiles and fabrics that swimmingly pass into samples of impeccable design and tailoring.Sinbad the Sailor, Bluebeard, Jonah and the Whale: tales of the sea are as old as storytelling itself. Ships and seafarers, love and longing, hazard and hope: familiar elements from fables illustrating the tangled dramas of a complex world. ”Style is a simple way of saying complicated things’ said Jean Cocteau: Max Mara Spring/Summer 2016 looks offshore for a new sartorial order based on straightforward elegance. ”

The creative director of the brand, Ian Griffiths seems to be aiming at racking up gorgeous and staggering collections focusing on specific stimulating themes. The Spring 2016 finds them writing a magnetic history of ocean life, sitting on the beach with a gaze at the fathomless ocean, at times lifting the eyes to see its match or getting lost in the ocean crazy waves or just feeling the whole ocean on shipboard looking forward to night to roll up as soon as possible as to stare at the million glittering stars in the sky.

Titled “A Sea Tale”, the brand described the collection with a single sentence –

“A collection inspired by memories, sailing through the ocean of life.”

Actually the infinite and abundant ocean has much to murmur and the designer having managed to decode the giant’s messages engendered a raft of absorbed-with-ocean pieces.

It is quite predictable to see the catwalk covered with multiple trenches and jackets of neutral shades like white, sand brown, beige and navy blue making a reference to the uniforms of captains and sailors at the same time providing a memento that Max Mara is a superior master of outerwear. Trenches are intentionally buttoned wrongly as if to emphasize that on the beach you do not have to be the right girl. Stripes are in full swing when it is about any water. White-deep blue, white-sky blue, white-black, white-orange and white-sunny yellow stripes have gathered together to present a range of tops, slouchy pants, midi skirts, loose fitting dresses and trenches.

Ian Griffiths has also traced back to the ‘90s and fetched one-color looks to our contemporary life. We see one-color and one-pattern look on a model wearing white-yellow striped top paired with the same structure midi skirt with a trench tossed over. The brand is apparently in love with the night sky full of stars, which is epitomized on many pieces among them the standout ones being the knitted vests worn over long-sleeved tops. A couple of T-shirts are portraying ships in the stormy ocean, while a handful of staples have turned into a real playground for ocean waves. Black sheer tops with mesh effect included in the lineup emanating some inscrutable and sinister touches are seemingly alerting the attendees that the serene and inviting ocean may in an instant turn into a perilous area.

What Ian Griffiths has done with the models’ faces is to be defined as a real experimentation process. The models are appearing one after another with their eyebrows painted in vibrant orange and green hues, suggesting an innovational makeup solution that may become a real torture for classic women, and a real godsend for extravagant girls.

Naive is the new sophisticated. Inspired by the deceptive artlessness of Cocteau’s drawings, the collection makes bold gestures with inky blacks and sunbaked papery whites. Signs and symbols, semaphorists, stars and sailing knots featured on grainy hand blocked prints. Primary red, vivid yellow, royal blue and cerulean evoke the childhood thrill of seeing ships’ flags flutter in the scintillant maritime light. Fashion label Max Mara always leaves us wanting more with classy collections and beautiful presentation.

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